Up for a rescue mission? This month’s Earth Awareness spotlight features topics to teach you about the big and small things we can all do to help the environment. Learn about global warming, renewable energy, and how recycling works.

We had to give a shout out to the Prep kids at St. Luke’s in Australia after we received this lovely email:

“Hi guys!

We have been doing a lot about recycling and reusing to reduce landfill. We are Prep children (5-6 year olds) from Australia. You might like to check out our blog. We are working hard to spread the word!

Up for a rescue mission? Take responsibility to reboot, recycle and reuse with this Spotlight on your world. Take advantage of our collection of teaching resources and activities all to do with earth awareness.

We put a request out last month for any recycling ideas you’ve used in school so we were really pleased when David Rogers (@daviderogers), Curriculum Leader for Geography at the Priory School in Portsmouth, sent us this super cross-curricular recycling lesson idea. Let us know if you use it!

David Rogers’ Recycling Lesson Idea: “We do this at my department, and are always really surprised at the fantastic ideas!”

“This lesson aims to get young people involved in changing their school community. Through a geographical enquiry, pupils will investigate the current state of recycling in the school and suggest improvements to the Headteacher.

To start: Investigate the ideas behind recycling. A good introduction is the BrainPOP UK movie on Recycling.

It would also be a good idea to follow up the idea with the POPquiz.

The key question to consider is whether recycling is a good idea. Use the Learning Event Generator to give the class some random choices of how to present their argument.

The next stage is to discover whether recycling goes on in your school. This takes the place of a Doorstep Geography investigation. Expanding some of the ideas covered in the BrainPOP movie, pupils work together (getting in some nice PLTS action) to create a questionnaire and data collection strategy.

For example, pupils could:

Count the number and type of recycling facilities that the school has

Find out what local facilities for recycling there are. You could even organise a trip to a recycling centre or get a guest speaker to come in. This is important, as different local authorities have different approaches to recycling.

Speak to key staff such as the catering manager, curriculum leaders, senior leaders…

Question their peers about recycling habits

After this, the class should be able to crunch the numbers in order to present their data. What have they found out? Is your school good at recycling?

I then give my classes a number of options. In order to link in to Citizenship, we give each class a real budget in order to run a campaign. This could be either a campaign to reinforce the recycling message, or to suggest how the school could do better at recycling.

Get the class to decide on ideas. For example, will they create posters or send emails to the Head? The budget covers things like photocopying and gives a realistic insight into enterprise – how effective will their campaign be? Pupils may find that staff do not recycle because of a lack of facilities at school. They could campaign for better facilities.

This is a simple idea that extends some of the ideas behind the BrainPOP movie and empowers students to take an active interest in their community.

By learning about responsible protest, they become better citizens!”

We’d love to hear the ideas your students come up with. If you’re not based in a school, try this idea out at home. Instead of suggesting improvements to the Headteacher, how about suggesting improvements to parents?

To encourage you to get started, we’ve produced a Reboot, Recycle, Reuse poster especially for this Spotlight:

Click image to start download

Download and pin it up at school or at home so you always remember Tim & Moby’s tips on being green.

You may have heard us spouting about our new Spotlights area and that’s because we think it’s fab and we think you’ll love it too. The fact we have a different Spotlight for every month of the year adds a nice bit of variety to the whole affair too!

The Spotlight planned for May is Reboot, Recyle, Reuse. It’s a Spotlight on your world. If you’re up for a rescue mission, it’s about taking responsibility to reboot, recycle and reuse. And we think it’s time we got you involved!

To make it all the more interesting for you, we’re wondering if any of you are willing to share your most successful lessons with us? Your lessons could be about recycling, taking care of the environment, or simply “being green”.

Do you have any tried and tested recycling ideas you want to tell the world? We’re not talking the “old socks make great dusters” type of ideas but something along the lines of a lesson that you and you’re students both enjoyed and benefited from.

We were so excited when Annette Iafrate, an S1 teacher at Knightswood Secondary in Glasgow, shared her story about a global warming lesson she taught (with a little help from Tim & Moby) and we’d love to hear more classroom stories like that!

If you have any good recycling lesson ideas please email info@brainpop.co.uk and, if you’re happy for us to do it, we’ll share it with BrainPOPpers everywhere during the Reboot, Recycle, Reuse Spotlight.

It’s not quite 15 minutes of fame but it’s getting to spend sometime in the Spotlight for sure! There could be a goodie bag in it for you…